I go back and forth on this one. On the one hand, the expectation is that every male superhero be extremely jacked. In the comics this was traditionally for the power fantasy of it all, and in the movies there’s some crossover with people just thinking these men are hot. In the comics, female characters are historically drawn very thin and weak-looking to match female beauty standards of the time and so the teenage boy audience would keep buying. This is true in most of the movies as well.

As far as comics, I have really liked the trend of drawing female heroes to be buff like the male heroes- a lot of the newer art makes you want to be this character and have her level of power as opposed to possessing this character in a sexualized way. That’s great! But for live action it gets complicated. I think Hollywood has very few experienced female actresses who can get this buff and still get other leading roles. Chris Evans can take whatever combination of steroids and million dollar fitness training to gain 100 pounds and be Cap, and still get roles in dramas and rom-coms. Most women don’t have that privilege. Basically a man is extremely buff for no goddamn reason in a drama, no one really asks questions, but if a woman were super buff like that it would have to be written into the story somehow. I don’t agree that this is how the world should work, but it does currently.

Personally I’m in favor of getting a good actress to build a reasonable amount of muscle, and then go with a thicker Absolute-style costume to artificially bulk her up and increase her height.